Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Jesse on sweating out the left

Jesse left this interesting comment in a recent discussion about UK "Equalities" minister Lynne Featherstone:

What do we know about left wingers in general? We know that they usually don't have children or if they do they only have one or two and those children often have problems. We know that their marriages don't last. We know that they're gradually getting stupider as their ideology takes over from their ability to reason or justify their points. We know that they're usually emotional basket cases. We know they're impractical and short term in their thinking, have to be frequently bailed out by others and don't plan ahead or effectively build. Specifically we know that they're phenomenally self destructive, have little impulse control, live in the moment, and surrender to their sensations to their detriment. As was pointed out Lynne Featherstone demonstrates all of these characteristics.

In short with all of these traits over the long term they're stuffed. They in elements have the hallmarks of a fever that has to be sweated out. You just have to stay in the game till its passed and people's desire to survive and grow, not just live off the strong accomplishments of the past, can kick in again.

Virtually all of left and liberal wing thinking relies on the assumption of the Western European world being rich, prosperous and on top, and as this comes into doubt the self indulgent destruction of the left and individual indulgence of the liberals will be called out for what it is. You can only get away with blaming others for so long before people stop listening and so much of the left liberal movement relies on the public's tacit support. You can also only shoot yourself in the foot so many times before you lose credibility.

Obviously there are individual leftists who are not like this in their personalities. But taken as a whole, liberal society does give this impression - that there is little serious consideration given to what is sustainable in the long-run; that many individuals prefer to feed their emotions with a self-indulgent sense of moral rectitude; and that the capacity to take hard-won gains from the past and to preserve them simply isn't there.

And although I would not recommend waiting for liberalism to self-destruct (as there is an institutional basis to liberalism that can keep it going if left unchallenged), nonetheless part of what we have to do is to try to outlast it. We have to do what we can to keep reasserting and reproducing what liberalism attempts to suppress or abolish.

Finally, it's not impossible that there will be a tipping point at which liberalism's claims will no longer be so widely accepted. If, for instance, China continues to rise and to dominate parts of the globe, then left-liberal explanations of inequality that involve whites being a uniquely evil and artificial oppressor group will be harder to swallow.

"If, for instance, China continues to rise and to dominate parts of the globe, then left-liberal explanations of inequality that involve whites being a uniquely evil and artificial oppressor group will be harder to swallow."

How about: "Yes, whites are just as evil and artificial as we always said - they're just not as competent as we thought!"

BTW my experience of my students i n Britain is that very very few of them have been successfully indoctrinated by the Left-Liberals. Indeed talking with them, I often feel *I'm* the left-liberal! They are incredibly dismissive of almost all the half-assed Liberal propaganda they get. A large part of that may just be typical British incompetence - the Swedish students I see *do* seem well indoctrinated. I hope it's more than that, though.

"While all political-gender cohorts preferred the higher and delayed reward ($1,200 a month from now), there were some notable subtrends. First, the moderate females had the highest preference for the delayed, yet higher reward, while the very conservative males and females had the lowest. There was a tendency for the delayed, yet higher reward to be preferred less as one went from left to right on the political scale.

What are we to make of the greater liberal shift in preference for the delayed reward, and the stronger conservative preference for the immediate reward? There is a rapidly expanding body of neurological research pertaining to the preference for immediate and delayed rewards, which is directly applicable to the study of political-religious disposition.

McClure et al. (2004) found that preference for immediate rewards activated regions associated with the midbrain dopamine system, such as the ventral striatum, medial prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and left posterior hippocampus. We should note that the dopaminergic system, which we have implicated in religious-conservatism, is hypothesized to predominately control reward learning (Schultz, 1997), something to consider as we discuss "morality". "

^Personally this is the reason why I think liberalism runs western society today. Liberals have a more innate aptitude for delaying rewards and education today rewards that type of personality trait which then gives those who do well at it high position in society.

If you want to undermine liberalism, push for the dismantling of the education-industrial complex and it's replacement with online learning and independent testing.

For an idea of what I mean by online education see http://www.parapundit.com/archives/cat_education_online.html

It is more efficient, effective, cheaper and accessible than bricks and mortar education and it would undercut one of the major pillars of liberalism.

Sir Mark there is something odd in the water of Britain. British feminists are at it again. See this. First we were exposed to an argument for infanticide, then we were introduced to the idea that pregnancy is barbaric and that artificial wombs should be created and now we have those who believe that Jesus Christ was not a man. What on earth are these ethicists?

That's a very interesting document - I'd prefer to write a post on it rather than a brief comment.

Chris wrote:

If you want to undermine liberalism, push for the dismantling of the education-industrial complex and it's replacement with online learning and independent testing.

I agree with the first half. We'll know we have a more serious and effective counterculture when we begin to challenge liberal dominance of the schools.

I'm not sure, though, that online learning is going to be the way to do it. It's an interesting idea for encouraging homeschooling as a first step, but most parents will still send their children to schools and in Australia there isn't a culture of homeschooling. So we need to:

Because I think that leftism is in vital part disguised ethnic conflict, I think it has a lot more staying power than is usually recognized. Fashions come and go, and institutional distortions can be remedied by reform or they end when the institution ends, but ethnic conflicts can last as long as the ethnicities themselves do. I think leftism has more staying power than Christianity, and vastly more staying power than nations like Australia and America.

So I disagree with this: "In short with all of these traits over the long term they're stuffed. They in elements have the hallmarks of a fever that has to be sweated out."

But I was glad to read this: "And although I would not recommend waiting for liberalism to self-destruct (as there is an institutional basis to liberalism that can keep it going if left unchallenged), nonetheless part of what we have to do is to try to outlast it."

I agree we have to hang on, and that won't be enough.

People used to believe in a political pendulum, meaning not only the alternation of parties in office but automatic swings from right to left and back again. That gave people comfort, because if you don't like the direction society is moving in, and the consequences of speaking up are likely to be unpleasant for you personally, you can just wait a while, and in a year or three, or a decade or two at most, things will swing back in the direction you prefer, whether you are right wing or left wing.

It doesn't work like that. We can move left, and left, and left, and we've been doing so for several decades now.

I agree in part with your comment - though I would broaden it. If it were just a matter of public opinion then traditionalism would be in a much stronger position than it is.

But liberalism dominates because it has an institutional base that traditionalism currently lacks.

What kind of groups give institutional support to liberalism? The unions fund the Labor Party, various business organisations fund both Labor and the Liberals, there are various organised ethnic groups which tend to support the left, so too does the gay lobby and the feminists.

Historically, support for traditionalism came from the churches, the landed gentry, the universities and some artists. But the landed gentry are no longer such a social force and the other groups have been captured by the left.

We can get back some institutional support, but it won't happen by itself, it will have to be wrenched back into existence.

There is no reason we can't build support to the point that we can have church parishes, schools, a group of supportive artists or even an arts society, a political party - perhaps even one day a tertiary level college.

The problem is keeping the momentum going. Definitely, there is a traditionalism growing internationally online. But it's a question of getting to the point that there are numbers on the ground to do something practically.

"It doesn't work like that. We can move left, and left, and left, and we've been doing so for several decades now."

I'd like to look at this in a slightly different manner if I may. As society gets richer, more comfortable and technologically advanced there will always be the temptation to abandon conservative values for left or liberal ones.

In Roman society there was a strong awareness that Greek and Eastern values, with their softness, decadence and impracticality, posed a threat to their Roman ones, masculinity, military strength, and honour, and were likely to increasingly do so the richer, more luxurious and secure the society became. There was an appreciation that the values of conservatism were demanding and as they become no longer required by necessity there was always the chance that people would move away from them and embrace something else.

Lets look at it with a concrete example. In a tribal or more primitive society there’s no room for gay rights. All men are required to be tough and to help secure and provide for the group in the face of a demanding environment. All men, or as many as possible, are required to father children to help strengthen the number of the group, as numbers provide labour, strength and security. Also in such an environment individualism, which has anti-social or indulgent outcomes, can’t be supported because every person must directly contribute to the group and there are few resources to spare. In such an environment homosexual rights are irrelevant and act to weaken the man’s role. However, if you move to an urban or more secure setting then homosexual rights can gain purchase. Tolerance becomes expected or required as society becomes less personal, ie we primarily relate to each other through contractual or structured settings rather than through closer kinship groups. Artisitic or theatrical flourishes become supported as society which has mastered many of the basics of survival looks instead towards atheistic stimulus. In short on a day to day basis masculine values of toughness become less necessary and societies more prosperous priorities result in a shift away from many of the bedrock virtues of conservatism .

In this light it is possible to see leftism and individualism as a resulting consequence of technological improvement and societal material progress. Leftism appeals to material comfort and the idea that someone else or the state should provide it. Liberalism appeals to individual freedom and autonomy and wants as little restriction from other individuals or groups as possible. Both of these ideas can only exist if society is rich, strong, and stable enough to provide or allow for them.

With that in mind, however, neither of these ideas, in their essences, can satisfy the basic elements needed for society to function. The Left’s focus on redistribution and individual comfort means they can’t be effective creators or producers. The liberal’s focus on limiting individual restriction creates the problem or creating many isolated individual worlds, and even in the computer age we can only do so much on our own and atomism can weaken society. Neither idea can seriously replicate society and it’s also not clear that either idea seriously tries to as both are focused on more individual or short term desires.

Consequently while society has increasingly many left wing or liberal traits and will likely continue to do so due to our material or technological prosperity, conservatism has great prospects because it is indispensable. The great mistake of the left and liberals is to imagine that they can survive without conservatism, or without conservatism as the foundations upon which society can be built, and because of that thinking they continue to go from failure to failure in the social application of their ideas. The great danger I think is that leftists and liberals will in their frustration, rather than remembrance conservatism, open the door for the foreigners in an attitude of disappointed self-destruction.

Conservatives may find the idea that the Left "can't last" reassuring, but this is cold comfort at best when we reflect on the fact that the Left is destroying civilization. When the motorcyclists in mohawks pull up to Jesse's fortified compound, I imagine Jesse telling everyone one the walls, "Sweat it out, men! Stay in the game until the fever has passed!"

Left aside is the question of how "traditionalism" can be preserved when liberalism controls church, state, schools, and media. "Traditionalism" is not fixed, it moves left, too, just more slowly than progressivism. Transport yourself 40 years forward in time, and you may find that what passes for "conservatism" at that point, even if it has triumphed over liberalism will not even seem worth preserving from a 2012 perspective.

Yes and no. It's good to be soberly realistic, because otherwise you expect easy results and are too readily discouraged.

But we should also recognise the weaknesses of our opponents. Jesse is correct that the left isn't good at thinking through how to make things last; the left also periodically "overheats" ideologically.

In my 20 years in politics I have several times experienced a period of great opportunities for an opposition to liberalism to grow.

One of these was the reaction against Keating in the mid-90s. That caused a rupture of the white working-class with Labor; it saw a flare up in populist politics, particularly in Queensland; and it also broke the stranglehold of left-liberalism on Australian politics.

Anon, you wrote:

Transport yourself 40 years forward in time, and you may find that what passes for "conservatism" at that point, even if it has triumphed over liberalism will not even seem worth preserving from a 2012 perspective.

Sure, that's a possible scenario. But so is this one: a principled traditionalist movement has helped build a counterculture in which not only the liberal standards of 2012, but all liberal standards, have been rejected. Within the counterculture, it is as if liberalism never was. The men of the counterculture act unapologetically according to masculine ideals. The framework necessary to uphold the traditional family is understood and maintained. A pride in heritage in fostered within an alternative media and within traditionalist education. A traditionalist arts council helps to fund and foster a new movement within the fine arts.

Again, Jesse is right that we cannot forever be on the back foot. Whether we end up succeeding or not, we have to have the attitude of going forward and building.